David Weber - Honor17 - Shadow of Saganami

by Shadow of Saganami(lit)

  "No, Sir." Shoupe sat for a moment, making mental calculations, then cocked her head at her boss. "Do you think Terekhov and Van Dort are going to get much done in the next eleven days, Sir?"

  "I gave up believing in miracles about the same time I gave up believing in the tooth fairy, Loretta," Khumalo rumbled like an irritated boar. Then he snorted and shook his head. "I suppose it's possible they might make a little progress, and at the moment, I'm prepared to settle for whatever we can get. But I don't see any way they're going to manage anything significant in that much time. And if they are making progress, we're likely to undo most of it by snatching them out of the star system with absolutely no warning."

  "I imagine you're right, Sir," Shoupe sighed. "I assume Baroness Medusa will send dispatches and directions along with the recall?"

  "You assume correctly." Khumalo managed a tart smile. "In this case, to a large extent, ours truly isn't to wonder why. Go ahead and draft a dispatch to Terekhov directing him to transport Mr. Van Dort to Split in the most expeditious manner and to render such assistance to Mr. Van Dort in his efforts there as may be directed in the Provisional Governor's dispatches."

  "Yes, Sir," she said. "I'll get right on it."

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The unarmed air car approached the agreed upon meeting site at exactly the agreed upon time.

  Stephen Westman stood leaning against a tree, arms folded across his chest, and watched it come. It had taken two full days of cautious contacts and secret negotiation to arrange this meeting, and there was a certain fitting irony, though he'd be unable to share it with his "guests," to the location he'd chosen. The last off-worlder he'd met here had been the man called "Firebrand," whose objectives had been somewhat different from these off-worlders'. He wondered if Van Dort and the Manties in the air car would find the scenery as spectacular as Firebrand had.

  The air car circled the site once, then settled to a neat landing the better part of seventy meters from Westman. The turbines whined as they spooled down, and Westman straightened, letting his arms fall to his side. Luis Palacios had wanted to be here, but Westman had turned him down. Although the MIM leader had complete faith in Chief Marshal Bannister's integrity, he had somewhat less confidence in Bernardus Van Dort's. And he'd never met any Manticoran-aside, he corrected himself with a snort of amusement, from those Manty surveyors he'd encountered on the banks of the Schuyler River. For all he knew, Manties might be almost as treacherous as Sollies.

  The passenger side hatch opened, and Trevor Bannister climbed out. The strength of the pang Westman felt as he saw his old friend for the first time in months surprised him. He wondered if Trevor felt the same way, but no expression crossed the Chief Marshal's face as he made a quick but thorough survey of the surroundings, then turned and walked slowly to his waiting "host."

  "Afternoon, Trevor," Westman said.

  "Steve." Bannister nodded, then shoved his Stetson well back on his head and gazed out over the New Missouri Gorge. "Nice scenery."

  "Seemed appropriate."

  The two men looked at one another for a moment, then Westman smiled.

  "Don't see any desperate ambushers?"

  "Didn't expect to." Bannister took off his hat and ran his fingers through his grizzled red hair. "You might want to think about the fact that the people in this air car also took your word that they had safe conduct," he said. Westman looked surprised, and the Chief Marshal snorted. "These aren't Montanans, Steve. Matter of fact, they're senior representatives of those antichrists you've been campaigning against. But they still took your word. You might want to consider what that says about whether or not you can trust what they say."

  "Point taken." Westman nodded. "All the same, a dishonest man can trust an honest man to stay honest. Doesn't necessarily work the other way 'round."

  "Reckon there's something in that," Bannister conceded. Then put his hat back on, turned, and waved to the passengers still in the air car.

  Westman watched them disembark. Van Dort was easy to recognize, even at this distance, thanks to his height. Besides, Westman had met the Rembrandter personally. The thought was like an under-ripe persimmon, and his mouth twisted briefly before his eyes moved on to the other new arrivals.

  The bearded man beside Van Dort also had blond hair and blue eyes. In fact, Westman thought with a certain inner amusement, the meeting site seemed to be crowded with tallish, blond-haired men. But the amusement faded as the off-worlders got closer and he looked into Aivars Terekhov's blue eyes. This wasn't a man to take lightly, he realized.

  His concentration on the two men had held his attention until they were almost up to him. He looked past them then, at the final person to climb out of the air car, and the last flicker of amusement disappeared. He'd been told Van Dort and Captain Terekhov would be accompanied by a single aide, a Manticoran midshipwoman. Some sort of very junior lieutenant, Bannister's messenger had told him. But no one had warned him what she looked like, and despite all his own formidable self-control, his eyes darted to Trevor Bannister's face.

  The Chief Marshal looked back at him, once again expressionless as a sphinx, and Westman winced mentally. It must have been like a punch in the belly when he saw that dark-haired, dark-eyed, solidly muscled young woman. Especially when he saw her standing with Bernardus Van Dort.

  "Steve," Bannister said in a professionally detached tone, "I don't have to introduce you to Mr. Van Dort, I know, but this," he gestured at the Manticoran captain, "is Captain Aivars Terekhov, commanding officer of HMS Hexapuma. And this," he gestured at the young woman standing respectfully behind Van Dort and Terekhov, and his voice never even wavered, "is Midshipwoman Helen Zilwicki."

  "Welcome," Westman said, shaking aside his own reaction to the young woman. "Wish I could say it's a pleasure to see you gentlemen, but I never was much good at polite lies. Nothing personal, but seeing you two on Montanan soil under any circumstances doesn't exactly make me want to do handsprings of delight."

  "Chief Marshal Bannister reminded me that you're a blunt-spoken man," Van Dort said with a smile of what looked like genuine amusement. "I can work with that. In fact, I've been accused of being just a little too blunt-spoken myself, upon occasion."

  "Hope you won't take this wrongly," Westman said, "but that's not the only thing you've been accused of. Especially not here on Montana."

  "I'm sure it isn't," the Rembrandter conceded. "As a matter of fact, if I were a Montanan, I'd probably harbor quite a bit of-ill-will, shall we say?-where Rembrandt and the Trade Union were concerned."

  One of Westman's eyebrows quirked at the admission. Of course, he reminded himself, words cost nothing. And even if Van Dort's statement was completely accurate, it didn't mean a thing about the Rembrandter's ultimate objectives.

  "As I'm sure you've noticed," he said, "I've had my people put up a tent over there, under the trees. It's quite a nice tent, -actually-used to belong to some Manticoran surveyors, I believe-and it's air-conditioned. I thought we might all like to get out of the sun and sit down someplace cool for this little talk you gentlemen wanted."

  * * *

  Helen was confused. There was something going on between Westman, Van Dort, and-of all people-Chief Marshal Bannister. She didn't have a clue what it was, but somehow she felt certain she was mixed up in it somehow. Which was preposterous, of course, except for the fact that she knew it was the truth.

  She followed the four men to the waiting tent. Its side still carried the rampant manticore of the Star Kingdom's coat of arms, and she felt a flicker of amused respect for Westman's audacity. He was making a none-too-subtle point by flaunting his trophy, but it also provided a comfortable place for the representatives of the various sides to sit down and talk.

  All four men found seats around the camp table inside the tent. There was a fifth chair, but Helen chose to stand, hands clasped loosely behind her, at Van Dort's shoulder. She felt Westman's eyes flicker over her again, once more with that odd expression of a
lmost-recognition. He looked as if he were about to insist that she sit down, which would have been in keeping with the elaborate Montanan social code. But he glanced at Van Dort and Bannister, then visibly changed his mind.

  "All right," he said after a moment. "This meeting was your idea, I understand, Mr. Van Dort. That being the case, I reckon it's only fair to give you the floor first."

  "Thank you," Van Dort said, but he didn't seem in any great hurry. He sat for a moment, his hands lightly folded on the camp table while he gazed out through the window-configured tent wall across the magnificent sweep of the New Missouri River Gorge. He sat that way for several seconds before he brought his gaze back inside and focused on Westman.

  "I'm here," he said, "not as a representative of Rembrandt, but as the personal representative of Baroness Medusa, Queen Elizabeth's Provisional Governor for the Talbott Cluster. I don't expect you to forget I'm a Rembrandter. Nor do I expect you to forget all the reasons you have for disliking me personally, or for distrusting and detesting Rembrandt and the Trade Union. If you wish to discuss our past policies and how we went about implementing them, I'm quite prepared to do so. However, I'd like to request that you allow me to speak as Baroness Medusa's envoy first. I suspect," he allowed himself a crooked smile, "that if we get into debating Montana-Rembrandt relations, we'll be here for the next several days. At least."

  Westman's mouth twitched. It looked, Helen thought, as if the Montanan had felt a sudden urge to smile back at Van Dort. If he had, he managed to suppress it quite handily, though.

  "Speaking as Baroness Medusa's representative, then," Van Dort continued, "I've been instructed to ask you to set forth your exact objections to the annexation of the Montana System, at the freely voted upon request of its citizens, by the Star Kingdom of Manticore. I realize you've published your manifesto, and knowing Montanans, I have no doubt that it honestly represents your convictions. What Baroness Medusa would like to do is to give you the opportunity to expand upon your manifesto's statements. She hopes, frankly, to open a direct dialogue. To give you a channel through which both of you may straightforwardly set forth your views and opinions. Whether or not this ultimately achieves anything is, of course, impossible to predict. But Baroness Medusa feels, and I believe with reason, that without such a dialogue, there's no hope at all of arriving at a negotiated resolution of the current situation."

  "I see," Westman said after frowning for several seconds. Then he shook his head-not in rejection, but to indicate a certain dubiousness, Helen thought.

  "That all sounds very reasonable," the guerrilla leader went on. "But I'm just a mite skeptical. And, truth be told, it's a mite difficult for me to forget who you are. You just mentioned freely voted upon requests, but everybody in the Cluster knows the entire annexation plebiscite came out of Rembrandt. And that you personally were the driving force behind it, at least at first. I hope you won't take this wrongly, but that tends to taint the whole notion in my eyes."

  "I don't blame you," Van Dort said calmly. "As I said, I'd prefer not to debate all of the past strains and tensions between Montana and the RTU. I will acknowledge freely, however, that the RTU's policies were part of a carefully planned strategy to build the economic power of the RTU's member systems as rapidly as possible. In pursuit of those policies, we did some things which, quite frankly, were one-sided and unfair to other systems. Montana was such a system, and, as such, you have every right to resent and dislike us.

  "I regret the fact that all of that's true, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't do exactly the same again under the same circumstances. This entire Cluster's been looking down the barrel of Frontier Security's pulser for a long time now. I saw that coming even before OFS started looking our way, and I came up with the RTU as the best strategy to protect my own homeworld. I didn't think there was any way I could hope to protect anyone else, so I didn't try to. But the discovery of the Lynx Terminus changed all that.

  "My point is simply this: the policies which made Rembrandt an economic aggressor were intended to defend Rembrandt. When I saw an opportunity for an even better defensive -strategy--annexation by the Star Kingdom-I leapt at it. And, in the process, I finally did find a way I could hope to protect the rest of the Cluster. You may not believe that was my motivation, but it was. And whether it was or not, and all personal considerations aside, you should consider the advantages and disadvantages of the proposal not on the basis of where it originated, but on the basis of what it can mean for your own world and your own objectives. That's what Baroness Medusa's asking you to do-and the reason she hopes to open a dialogue with you."

  "I see." Westman sat back, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

  "I see," he repeated. "Unfortunately, at the moment, it seems to me that my objectives and Baroness Medusa's are mutually exclusive. I don't want Montana to join the Star Kingdom; she wants to annex it for her Queen." He shook his head again. "Not a whole lot of room for compromise there, I think."

  "I don't believe I said anything about compromises, Mr. Westman." Westman's eyebrows rose, and Van Dort smiled again, thinly, this time. "Assuming your own government remains committed to seeking annexation, and assuming the Constitutional Convention drafts a Constitution which is mutually acceptable to our citizens and Manticore, Montana will become a member of the Star Kingdom."

  Westman's eyes flashed, but Van Dort met his fiery gaze steadily.

  "That isn't meant to sound gratuitously confrontational," the Rembrandter said. "However, the fact is that, like any guerrilla movement, yours can only succeed if a significant percentage of the Montanan population decides to support it. Without that, your movement is ultimately doomed, and the question simply becomes how much damage you do to your own star system and, indirectly, to the Star Kingdom at large before it's ultimately suppressed."

  "I expect you might find the amount of damage we can do more than you'd care for," Westman half-snapped.

  "Baroness Medusa finds the damage you've already done more than she cares for. But that doesn't mean the Star Kingdom isn't prepared to absorb even more damage if it must. And, I repeat, the Star Kingdom will only be involved in attempting to forcibly suppress your actions if the majority of your fellow Montanans continue to desire to become citizens of the Star Kingdom. Should that be true, however, and should an acceptable Constitution be drafted and approved by the Manticoran Parliament and the legislatures of the Cluster's member star systems, the Star Kingdom will commit whatever resources are necessary to bring an end to violence here on Montana."

  "Better listen to him, Steve," Chief Marshal Bannister said shortly. "So far, you're up against me, and I'm basically a cop. If the annexation goes through and you're still blowing things up, or, even worse, having shootouts with me and my people, the Manticorans will send in Marines. And those Marines'll have battle armor, orbital surveillance systems, armored vehicles, and all the things I don't have. You're good. I'll admit that. In fact, I think you may be better than I am. But you're not good enough to stand up to that kind of an opponent. Especially not if everyone else is rooting for the other side."

  Westman's face tightened. It looked to Helen as if he would have liked to reject what both Van Dort and Bannister had said. But the man was obviously too realistic to fool himself. Yet there was something in his eyes. Something that seemed to suggest at least a kernel of doubt.

  I wonder, she thought. Does he have access-or think he has access-to some sort of off-world support? Something that might give him an edge, or at least some kind of equalizer, against modern military hardware? But if he does, where the hell is it coming from? And where the hell is Daddy when I need a super-spook?

  "Whether or not I can win in the end is one thing," Westman said after a few, tense seconds. "Whether or not what I believe in requires me to try is something else. And whether or not this planet will be worth annexing after we're done is still another something else."

  "Forgive me, Mr. Westman," Captain Terekhov said, "but I believe you're missin
g part of Mr. Van Dort's point."

  "Which is?" Westman asked.

  "What Baroness Medusa is trying to tell you, Sir," the Captain said calmly, "is that the amount of damage is immaterial. The Star Kingdom isn't interested in annexing Montana because of the wealth you don't have. Obviously, in the long term, we believe Montana, like all the Cluster's star systems, will become more prosperous and represent a net economic gain for the Star Kingdom as a whole. But, to be perfectly honest, the Lynx Terminus represents the only powerful selfish reason for us to be involved in this region, and there are many countervailing reasons why we shouldn't be here. At the possible expense of belaboring a point, the entire question of annexation only arose after the citizens of the Cluster requested it. The Star Kingdom's commitment to the annexation of Montana is a moral one, not an economic one. Damage can be repaired. Destroyed facilities can be rebuilt. The legal and moral obligations of a government to protect its citizens-both in their persons and property and in their right to live under the government of their choice-aren't negotiable."

  Westman sat back, regarding the Captain through narrow eyes. There was a speculative light in them, Helen thought. It was as if what the Captain had just said puzzled him. Or surprised him, at least.